Apache is an Athabaskan language closely related to Navajo. It is spoken in the United States, unusual because most Athabaskan languages are spoken in the northwest of Canada and Alaska.

Like most Athabaskan languages, Apache shows various levels of animacy in its grammar, with certain nouns taking different verb forms from others according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy. It is a tonal language, with 4 tones: rising (on long vowels only, marked by an acute accent on the second vowel), falling (on long vowels only, marked by an acute accent on the first vowel), high (on long or short vowels, marked by an acute accent on both vowels in a long vowel or on the single vowel in a short vowel), and low (unmarked).

Apache's phonology is very similar to that of Navajo. It has five phonemic vowels: a, e, i, o, and u, and these may all be nasalised and/or long.

The consonants of the western dialect of Apache are as follows:

              Stop     Fricative     Affricate   Approximant   Nasal
 Bilabial     b                                  w             m
 Alveolar     d t t'   z   s         dz ts ts'                 n
 Alv. lateral              lh        dl tl tl'   l
 Postalveolar          zh  sh        j  ch ch'   y
 Velar        g k k'   gh  x*
 Velar labial   kw     ghw xw
 Glottal        '          h*

 * /x/ and /h/ are allophones; this is typical of the United States Athabaskan languages.

Some dialects of Apache include Jicarilla, Lipan, Kiowa-Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero and Western Apache. Lipan and Kiowa-Apache are nearly extinct. Western Apache has a number of subdialects: Cibeque, Northern and Southern Tonto, San Carlos and White Mountain.

An Apache dictionary (Western Apache-English Dictionary: A Community-Generated Bilingual Dictionary) was recently published by Dorothy Bray and the White Mountain Apache Tribe in 1998. Some of the classification and pronunciation information has been challenged, but this remains the best reference available at present.